Hurricane Sandy: The Long Road Back

[Stormlover74]

Which is probably why the best way to get a powerful hurricane up here is something along the lines of 1938, partial phasing with a trough, a strong blocking high near Newfoundland.

Agreed though that the track especially was a worse case scenario and extremely rare, the phase with the trough also made it massive, which contributed to Sandys very low pressure and dangerous surge.

Yeah the chances of a repeat of that type of scenario is highly unlikely. More likely is we'll see a strong Cat 2/3 hurricane move quickly up the coast and cause alot of damage but confined to a much smaller area...ala Gloria, where NJ/NYC was mostly spared despite a lot of rain and wind where LI took the brunt of it

[jm1220]

Yeah the chances of a repeat of that type of scenario is highly unlikely. More likely is we'll see a strong Cat 2/3 hurricane move quickly up the coast and cause alot of damage but confined to a much smaller area...ala Gloria, where NJ/NYC was mostly spared despite a lot of rain and wind where LI took the brunt of it

From what I heard, the winds around where I live were stronger during Gloria, but the surge was much less and only flooded spots that were either very low lying or on the beaches. Gloria's eye crossed directly over Nassau County I believe.

 

I think Sandy's scenario was just about as bad as we could have gotten, unless Sandy was a more powerful hurricane upon entering the phase, which would be extremely difficult since the conditions necessary almost never exist, period, in the mid-late summer and the mid latitude troughs are further north of where they are in late October. Honestly, a Cat 3/4 hurricane in the Bahamas doesn't scare me as much in terms of impact for this area with no mid-latitude help. I knew immediately upon several models consistently slamming us with this that we were in very serious trouble. A Perfect Storm is by far the worst threat we have.

[jm1220]

Which is probably why the best way to get a powerful hurricane up here is something along the lines of 1938, partial phasing with a trough, a strong blocking high near Newfoundland.

Agreed though that the track especially was a worse case scenario and extremely rare, the phase with the trough also made it massive, which contributed to Sandys very low pressure and dangerous surge.

Yep, it was an even stronger version of the 1991 Perfect Storm (actually much stronger, as it got 30 mb lower in pressure than that one at one time), and tracked in a way to ram it right into NJ. For surge at least, nothing is worse since the wind direction veered perfectly in a way to maximize surge from LI Sound initially on the NE wind and then NY Harbor on the SE wind. Anyone that was vulnerable to high water in NYC or Long Island was inundated.